Reading the newspaper over a coffee has been a morning ritual for a very long time. Mc Donald’s France has given this time-honoured habit a 2018 update and, it hopes, a resurgence. TBWA\Paris and DAN\Paris have turned the coffee cups and bags in more than 1,400 French McDonald’s restaurants into news media. Each contains a QR code incorporated into its design by illustrator, Peter Strain (which was also created using coffee instead of ink). The codes provide access to a digital platform, Flash Stories by McCafé, which contains five content sections – sports, fashion, culture (cinema/music), news and gaming.

The content is a mixture of original and curated stories and is created each week by DAN\Paris. The mobile stories which can be read in the time it takes to enjoy a coffee or cookie. DAN\Paris and TBWA\Else have provided a dedicated studio of authors, film makers, motion designers and community managers to produce the content.

To promote the campaign – and relaunch the coffee-reading ritual – TBWA\PARIS created a fake film trailer called Lost in the Black Forest. The

trailer was also launched in movie theatres on December 5 and details – the trailer, film poster, synopsis, fact sheet and filming anecdotes – were posted on the AlloCiné website. The trailer was produced by TBWA\Else and directed by the Hungry Beards collective: Benjamin Marchal, Faustin Claverie, Josselin Pacreau & Sébastien Guinet. Its ending reveals the Flash Stories idea.